Statistical Significance for Hours Worked

I am trying to compare the hours worked during a 3 month time frame for two groups of people, male and female. What I want to tell is if there is statistical significance between the average total hours worked for men and the average total hours worked for women. What would be the best way to determine this? The only data I have is the number of hours worked for each person. So I know the average hours worked for 26 men is 77.7 and for 19 women it is 58.9, but how do I know if this is a significant difference.

waffer102 said:

I am trying to compare the hours worked during a 3 month time frame for two groups of people, male and female. What I want to tell is if there is statistical significance between the average total hours worked for men and the average total hours worked for women. What would be the best way to determine this? The only data I have is the number of hours worked for each person. So I know the average hours worked for 26 men is 77.7 and for 19 women it is 58.9, but how do I know if this is a significant difference.

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To learn how to work with statistical significance in differences between populations, you can try some of the many lessons listed in Google. For instance, this lesson from an "online stat book" seems fairly straightforward.

Once you have studied at least three lessons, please attempt the exercise. If you get stuck, you can then reply with a clear listing of your thoughts and efforts so far, at which point volunteers can try to help you figure out where things are going sideways. Thank you!

Thank you for the link, it was very helpful. I was able to find a t score of about 1.366 and the value of t from the table was about 1.681. This would lead me to believe the data in my set is not statistically different.

Would I also be able to use a z-score in this situation? If my math is correct I can calculate the z-score by taking the mean from the female group minus the mean from the male group and divide that by the standard deviation of the female group to determine how many standard deviations away from the male mean the female mean is. So (58.9-77.7)/37.2= -0.505 The z-score here would tell me the female mean is half a standard deviation below the male mean which would not be significant. Is my thinking correct on this?